Do you work with Sims???

I've just decided. I must work with Sims.

As most people know by now, "The Sims" is a very popular computer game franchise that allows the player to create and control any number of little simulated people. The player can select how they look and dress from a variety of heads and bodies, buy and furnish houses for them, get them jobs, dates, pets, children, and basically live out an entire "Sim" life based on the player's whims.

I've decided I must be working with Sims for the following reasons:

1-my boss has Betty Brant's hair. If anyone remembers the old Spiderman cartoon from decades ago (yes the one with the coolest theme ever, the one that assures us that Spidey can indeed, "do whatever a spider can". Welcome? Fame? Nope....he is, naturally, ignored, his only reward being "action".....and plenty of it). Anyway, that was a pretty long aside, The point is, Betty Brant, the secretary of the distrurbingly Hitler-esque J. Jonah Jamieson, had a strange helmet of a hair-do with evenly-spaced bangs in the front, and a little flippy lip around the shoulders. My boss, a youngish male, has the very same hair-do. Betty Brant hair on a young male body. Would anyone else other than a Sim combine these attributes on purpose??

2-outrageous conversation. In The Sims, the characters "converse" in a strange set of heiroglyphics that seem to indicate they are talking about cars, planes, desks buildings with columns and other assorted images. The conversations never seem to make much sense, other than the fact that some Sims appear to enjoy talking about cars, the sun, etc., and others register their displeasure by repeating the glyph with a little red X through it. Our Sim conversation this week came from one of our Big bosses, who gave us a "state of the company" address, which was so laden with unknown acronyms he could have been talking in some sort of lost mutant groundhog tongue. All I know is that some charts showed red lines going up, and others showed them going down. Sims communicating in their own Sim language??

3-the ultimate proof: irrational behavior. In The Sims, the characters can be occasionally confused if, say, their access throug a doorway is blocked by something; a Sim cat, Sim person or a Sim garbage can. Sims usually react by pointing at the offending object, shrugging their Sim shoulders and shaking their heads as if to say "Wha?". The Sims can get so perplexed by their little problem that it's possible for a character to "starve to death" just standing around waiting for the blockage to resolve itself. Today one of the bosses was told that a worker's telephone didn't work; it was emitting a loud buzzing sound making it impossible to converse with anyone (whish was the employee's job). The boss advised that a replacement phone be installed, and was informed that it was tried with no success-there must be something wrong with the telephone line. The bosses decision: well there's no place else for them to sit, so the employee will just have to sit there and try to do their job on a phone that didn't work!!!.

Keep an eye out for Sims in YOUR workplace. It's fun and educational-and they're easy to lock in closets!!

WOW...visible people!!

We (being AGF and I) have just returned from our favorite second-hand store with armloads of goodies, including, for myself, entire Visible Man and Visible Woman model kits, with instructions....all for only $7.99!!! (they came in the lid of a Visible Man box-maybe not collector-worthy, but still cool to me!).

For those who don't remember, the "Visible Man" and "Visible Woman" were educational plastic model kits put out by a company called "Renwal" of Mineola, New York in the 1960's and early 70's. They were 1/5th scale representations of the human body, showing skeletal structure, organs and representations of the nervous system, and they looked like the creepy models you always stared at in your doctor's office as a kid (either that or you stared at those weird calendars portraying industrious little bug/human hybrid communities involved in a variety of smurf-like activities....anyone remember what those things were called??). The Visible Man and Woman were really detailed kits, allowing the builder to assemble a human torso from bones on up. The body was clear plastic, and there was a large chest cavity allowing the builder to poke around and explore the arrangement of organs, or pretend to build a Frankenstein monster, whatever floated your boat.

The Visible Woman, though an intriguing concept to pre-pubescent males of the time, actually including a perfectly-scaled fetus and infant, which would have made a terrific educational tool for parents giving their kids the "birds and bees" talk. The kits could be built as-is or painted in realistic colours, which were suggested in the instructions (apparently the upper surface of the Transverse Colon is "greenish-pink" while the Rectum is "brownish-pink". Try to find THOSE colours from Testors!!)

I've posted scans of the first pages of the instructions, and I'd be happy to make and send details scans if any collectors wanted copies for their own use. Just respond here with an e-mail addres you'd like it sent to. No viruses included, promise!!

Anyway, finding these old model kits at a bargain proce was Better Than Awesome, especially when one of the ladies said they have collectors price their vintage items, then price them lower than suggested retail!!!! AGF was able to pick of some coolio doll dresses and shoes, as well as a couple of books. Bargain stores..always BETTER THAN AWESOME!!!